mia

Read here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...las-vegas.html

TTT103

If the fourth night free goes, I'm done with the card. However, I know that a colleague of mine abuses the heck out of the fourth night free benefit by booking business trips through Citi. My guess is that Citi intended the benefit to be for leisure travelers--not those who are going to use the benefit every other week.

With all of that said, I certainly wouldn't mind Citi placing a usage limit on the benefit--such as no more than six times per year.

MilesTalk

This.

Citi doesn't seem to want to compete with Reserve so maybe they should stop trying, ditch the Priority Pass (which is duplicative if you have the Reserve), and give us a reason or two besides 4th night free to hold this card.

I am OK with limiting the free night benefit but it has to be at least 4-6 a year. If I have to start deciding if a particular multi-nght stay will get "enough" value because I may have a better one later, it would be too much of a headache to care and I'd drop it.

I would love some of the new benefits they mention.

Productivity

I get massive value out of the fourth night (>$10,000) this year. If it were to change I struggle to see why I would keep this card.

baroqen

Some of the survey options really look fantastic. I'd love enhanced travel credit (or even dining credit) and more points in exchange for losing PP and limiting 4th night free. Third night free would be amazing as well, but not if it's only twice a year. 4-6 times a year seems ideal for either one while still guaranteeing value for the card.

I agree that the Prestige should stop trying to compete with the Amex Plat and Chase Reserve. There is too much duplication and frankly in my opinion MR and UR are both superior to TYP, so there's more incentive to use the other two. I'm hoping some of this comes to reality, bring it on Citi!

MD/DC Flyer

And that is exactly what Citi problem is. I only use the card for 4th night free payments and nothing else (after the airline reimbursement). TYP are less valuable than other points currency and have much less flexibility so there is no incentive to use the card.

Of course the survey did a very poor job in trying to capture this.

MilesTalk

Totally agree that from a marketing perspective, the survey fails to do its job in properly seeing how the card can be improved and optimized (from both the customer perspective and from Citi's).

Productivity

What would hold the card for me, is if they could bring AA in as a partner. With SPG going away next year, there will be no way to make AA points at better than 1 point : 1 dollar on a credit card as far as I can tell except for AA spend itself.

TTT103

The Powers to be at Citi need to figure out what they want the Prestige card to be. Now that they are losing the Hilton card, and no longer have an exclusive with AA, pretty soon they will be left with only the Costco card, which wasn't the best financial move for them.

My guess is that the changes two months ago to Prestige may not have made the card profitable.

sdsearch

Indeed, I don't remember offhand which cards from which banks, but some of these points/miles cards have been sending surveys of this sort for a decade or more, and if you look back at part surveys, hardly any of the changes ever suggested on those surveys ever come to light.

It's almost as if they're throwing a bunch of questions in there just to determine what kind of person is taking the survey, rather than to actually determine whether to make that change. ("Oh, this person just wants to earn an unreasonable number of points but they'll spend very little, we'll just ignore all of their answers.")

Marketers are at typically more interested in whether they have a representative sampling of their desired audience than just get a bunch random raw answers. They don't know enough about to determine who you are before they send the survey, so they may "plant" a bunch of questions on the survey that are designed to figure out what kind of customer you are, and nothing more (no matter what the questions seem to be asking about).

Live telemarketers often ask questions in a certain order, with the first questions just to determine if they're interested in continuing to talk to you. But an email survey can't do that the same way, so they may mix in questions that are for different purposes, and not necessarily all questions are for that stated purpose.

MD/DC Flyer

That might be the case, and no one can tell for sure.

But the questions on this particual survey were almost only about different features of a card, using that annoying method of forcing you to choose between different sets of different features, and then using the features you seemed to like best in comparison to CSR and Amex Platinum (not called by name, but by features - but it was clear who was who).

There were very little other questions in the survey.

84fiero

Yeah I've received lots of these over the years. And many of them have a similar format too. I can't recall a time when anything from the surveys ended up happening. While Citi may and probably will change the card again, I wouldn't take this survey as any evidence of specifics or get too worked up over it.

snic

You could be right, but for a different reason. People are assuming that the questions have to do with changing the features of the Prestige card. But the questions could also have to do with introducing an entirely new card. Citi might want to see what features are attractive to Prestige customers. (I got this survey too, and that's how I understood what little explanatory information they provided.)

AUSINSIGHT

This is what I do for a living (research), so I might be able to add some perspective here. I do not work for CITI nor have I ever done work with CITI, so my perspective is NOT inside information, merely just a more general lay of the land.

1) You don't pay to commission this research unless you are CONSIDERING options. That means they want to see what would motivate people. If there audience is JUST customers then they're seeing a decrease in retention. If it's non customers they're testing acquisition campaigns. Without knowing the universe I can't tell you more.

2) Just because a feature tests well, doesn't mean it WILL be included. Business analysts make those decisions. Their goal is to create the most compelling product possible at the lowest cost. This is the math on what is compelling.

3) If a current product (4th night) doesn't test well or they can lower it and not get a backlash to afford to add something that DOES test well, that's a GREAT piece of information. If something is "cheap" to add but gets a HUGE response that's a great option.

4) If you don't think that CITI is wanting to find a way to remain competitive / be more competitive with Chase and American Express you're out of your mind. Other banks (US Bank, BoA, etc) are trying different formulas, and none of those seem to have been great either.

sdsearch

Well, to me, Chase and American Express are better because of better transfer partners.

What Citi really needs is a domestic airline transfer that uses miles and includes partner redemptions. Amex has Detla, Chase has United, but Citi has neither AA nor Alaska (and in fact dropped Virgin when it started to merge with Alaska).

Citi is thus either just for people into JetBlue same-as-cash points, or same-as-cash direct travel redemptions, or skilled at negotiating the more complex world of esoteric foreign carriers. That's the not the way to compete with Chase and Amex, IMHO. It's a little bit better than US Bank or BofA (which have zero transfer partners), but it's doesn't feel much better.

Amex also has several hotel programs as transfer partners, and Chase has at least two major hotel programs, but Citi has only one (Hilton). So IMHO Citi needs to beef up that area too.

But I didn't see anything about transfer partners on the list of questions upthread.